Bridges Digital Archive: Audio and Video Recordings

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Document Type

Oral History

Publication Date

5-15-2015

Abstract

Ratibu Jacocks interviews Linda L. Smith, a native and long-time resident of San Bernardino, California. Smith talks about how she co-authored a book, Creating Value Through People as well as writing Love Letters to the Lord and Business by Faith, which has many volumes. She also briefly describes her time living in Texas and then returning to San Bernardino and the Mt. Vernon and Magnolia neighborhood she grew up in. Smith mentions that she wanted to be a nurse since she saw a picture of one when she was very young. She believed that her caring, kind and devout spirit coincided with her goal of becoming a nurse, a career that lasted fifteen years. Growing up with six brothers and a mother was the life she had that, as she described, was strained and toxic at times. This led to the creation of Four-D College, a private institution in Southern California that had programs in the medical sciences and was faith-based. The college was something that had started as a message from God and, with all the mistreatment her mother and brothers had given her, decided that was her calling. After giving up her years-long nursing career, Smith started her college with limited funding and academic administration. After returning to get her full-time teaching credential and with the help of many others supplying her with medical equipment, Smith was finally able to open her school and had two campuses at the time of the recording. The conversation returns to the topic of the relationship between Smith and her brother, much of which had led to ideas of self-harm as well as successfully finding help from a clinical psychologist. Her father would read to her and her siblings from the Bible, which Smith mentions was not common during her time. Both she and Jacocks then discuss the Christian faith, particularly those who seem not to live up to the ideas of the faith, and how many face issues. To this, Smith says that people need to put their faith into practice and never back down from their devotion. The interviewee then speaks about showing love to her grandchildren in a way that her own mother never did. That way, she would give the love that her own children did not receive from her mother. Smith then discusses her college again, going over the medical programs that are offered, from vocational nursing to medical billing and coding. With all these accomplishments, Smith had to interact with people who did not take her school as seriously as she saw it. Often they would say it was a small tech school rather than the college she worked hard to create. After giving some words to those who may view the recording fifty years from then about how she stood by her faith, the interview ends with Smith autographing and kissing one of her books.

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